Conscience Whigs

The Conscience Whigs was a faction of the US Whig Party that was founded in 1834. The Conscience Whigs were based in the northern US states, and they were noted by their moral opposition to slavery; they were rivals with the conservative Cotton Whigs. In 1848, when the party nominated the slaveholder Zachary Taylor as its presidential nominee, the Conscience Whigs split from the main party to form the short-lived Free Soil Party. After the party's disastrous election results, the Conscience Whigs returned to the main party, and many of them would go on to become founding members of the abolitionist Republican Party.